In the event of a fire in a building, the fire must be prevented from spreading, and occupants of the building or the people working there must be swiftly evacuated. For this purpose various fire extinguishers and fire alarms are available. The smoke generated by a fire quickly spreads along the ceiling and reaches far from the origin of the fire. On account of this phenomenon even the people who do not need to hasten their evacuation become disquieted so that they stampede, resulting in a disaster. To prevent such a calamity, anti-smoke hanging walls have been devised to be hung from the ceilings at intervals. Tests show that hanging walls effectively prevent the smoke from spreading along the ceiling.
Anti-smoke hanging walls are mostly made of glass plates at the top of which holes are bored. Using the holes, the glass plates are hung from the ceiling. In other devices press beads are oppositely provided within metal frames fitted near the ceiling, and glass plates are frictionally held between the press beads. The former method of connecting the plates is relatively difficult to execute and is liable to break the glass; moreover, it spoils the appearance. In the latter method, the glass plates are pressed in; therefore this method excels in ease and rapidity of execution but gives a feeling of disquiet to people passing under the mounted glass plates.